Carey Mulligan is Jeanette Brinson in “Wildlife,” a role that brings out the best in the actress. Photo: IFC Films

“Wildlife” is actor Paul Dano’s first film as a director, and unless the movie is some kind of fluke, this guy can really direct. He has taste, discernment, understated flair, an instinct for both camera placement and movement, and an ability to elicit strong performances, not just from one character, but from an entire ensemble.

His movie is an adaptation of Richard Ford’s novel, set in Montana in 1960, and the first and most important decision that Dano made about it — a decision he shared with fellow screenwriter Zoe Kazan — was not to film the story as a memory piece, with voice-over narration. Every single good thing in “Wildlife” flows from that one inspired aesthetic judgment.

Voice-over would have killed this movie. It would have made the past seem as if it were always past. It would have made everything seem safe, and it would have transformed all the adult characters into objects of nostalgia, people whose struggles are already over. Instead, “Wildlife” forces the audience to feel its own way through this world. Dano guides us slowly. For at least a half hour, we are not quite sure what the story will be or who will be its focus — but “Wildlife” has our attention from the first minute.

We meet an attractive family in a humble house. The TV is on the blink. The 14-year-old boy (Ed Oxenbould) is doing his homework. The genial father (Jake Gyllenhaal) is there, and so is the brisk, industrious mother (Carey Mulligan). Right away, Dano involves us in two perspectives. There’s ours, and there’s the boy’s. As we pick up information, we look to see how much young Joe is noticing, and how he feels about it. Throughout, we experience, through his eyes, his evolving knowledge and understanding of his parents.

The family apparently has moved a lot already — pretty much every time the father loses his job. In a simple and ideally shot scene, Dano keeps the camera on Joe as he watches his father, off camera, get fired yet again. The expression on the boy’s face is hard to read, beyond a certain concern, but you do sense that he’s taking it all in and beginning to wonder about his father’s ability to function in life.

Yet if “Wildlife” is the story of a boy’s discovering the true natures of his mother and father, the movie’s concentration is more on Mom than Dad. The role of Jeanette, the mother, brings out the best in Mulligan, who understands her thoroughly — her strength, her confidence, her desperation, her lack of sentiment, and her charm. Dano makes the audience look at her in a way not unlike how Joe looks at his mother, such that we even feel a kind of relief when she turns to the camera, in close-up, and shares with us her amused, complicit smile.

Mulligan’s is one of the year’s best performances. She plays a woman who’s trapped, or would be, but she won’t accept or recognize it. In one of the best scenes, Joe and his mother dine at the house of Warren, the local rich guy (Bill Camp), and her mood, fueled by alcohol, seems to change every minute. It’s the portrait of an extremely forceful woman who doesn’t know what to do, so she keeps doing something, anything — swinging from girlish to maternal to haughty to enthusiastic, controlling the moment through force of personality. At one point, she starts dancing by herself (“cha-cha-CHA, cha-cha-CHA”), in some absurd mating ritual from an earlier era.

Dano tosses off nothing. At one point, Joe watches his father and other men ride off in the back of a pickup truck, on their way to fighting forest fires. The truck slowly pulls away, as Joe walks along with it. Then it makes a right and starts down a long street as Joe, in the foreground, watches. That might not sound like much, but something in the composition, in the camera movement and perhaps even in the feeling established between the actors takes you onto that street and into that morning. You feel the mood. You almost feel the weather.

“Wildlife” isn’t dazzling entertainment but an intelligent, low-key and satisfying film with a rare respect for every character. (The movie’s best monologue, for example, goes to Warren, who’s a much better fellow than you’d expect.) There are lots of directors working, including some name directors, who could not have done what Dano does here. This could be the beginning of a serious career.